Current trends in the market place have influenced merchants to include service plans for many of their products. Sometimes the service plans are offered directly by a merchant, such as BestBuy's GeekSquad and Office Depot's Tech Depot Services, and in other cases a third party may fulfill a merchant's service plan obligations. Customers may purchase these services to receive additional support for their product, ideally increasing their use and enjoyment of it.
Online merchants associate products with service plans or warranties so that a customer can buy an extended warranty or service plan when he or she purchases a product. Sometimes, however, a product should be listed as having a service plan, but an error in the listing causes the webpage on which the product is listed to not offer a service plan. Consequentially, the online merchant would not, in this case, offer the service plan to the customer. In other cases, the website of the online merchant may associate the product with an incorrect service plan. Because the sale of warranties or service plans may be a significant source of revenue for the merchant, merchants often expend considerable resources in checking their websites for mismatched warranties and products not having an associated warranty.